Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Halo 4 announced. Please don’t tell me people are surprised.

I’m going to go right for the throat. Halo 4’s announcement did not surprise me in the slightest. Why? Because in Halo 3, you don’t “finish” the fucking fight! When I “finished the fight”, I wasn’t surprised that they didn’t give closure, and I knew that they would continue to milk Halo for all that it was worth. I didn’t, however, think they would make a game about an ODST, and a prequel that wasn’t based on the actual prequel The Fall of Reach. But for the sake of this article, I’ll rant about the end of Halo 3 for a bit.

Halo 3 did not give any fucking closure whatsoever, which is what Bungie promised they would give. What did they give us? Master Chief defeating the bad guys and then saying to Cortana, “Wake me if you need me.” When he uttered those words I said, “Oh yeah, here we go. Bungie’s going to milk this fucker dry.” Is that what you consider closure? If the end of Halo 3 is considered “closure”, then Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith had closure.

Now, I of course didn’t know when Halo 4 would be revealed, no one did. But I wasn’t surprised in the slightest when it did happen. I’m really glad it was announced, don’t get me wrong. I had just got sick of them making ODST and Reach. Who the fuck cares about some ODST? And no one cares about a shitty story about the fall of Reach which isn’t even based on the book The Fall of Reach. Okay, shitty isn’t the words I should be using. I enjoyed Reach, but it was the characters I didn’t care about. Why would I care about all the stereotypes that they use in every single over-the-top action movie? *Spoilers* The only characters I actually felt for were the big guy, Jorge, who dies so fucking heroically, and Noble-6 when you die at the end. That was some epic shit. *End spoilers* But, that all that aside, why didn’t they make Reach about the book (which was about Master Chief and the other Spartans) and not some random characters they made up that no one likes? Because they wanted to hold out on showing Master Chief in any games to better shock the shit out of us when they finally decided to release Halo 4.

It is no longer Bungie who is making Halo 4. I’m happy with this because since Halo 3 Bungie has turned into a money hungry piece of shit company that everyone hates (Microsoft is too but some people fail to realize it). The actual good people from Bungie have left and are working with 343 Industries (the studio that took over the Halo series after Reach launched) and are making Halo 4.

Now, it is said that Halo 4 is the start of a new trilogy but there was nothing more said on that topic. So, does that mean they will be churning out a Halo game ever year for 3 years, or will they work on them for longer and possibly have Halo 5 and/or Halo 6 actually come out on the new Xbox? I hope the latter, because I don’t feel like the Halo series turning in to the Call Of Duty series, which it is pretty close to now. They have never failed with the Halo games, they always take their time working on them and they obviously have with Halo 4. But just because Halo 4 was announced now doesn’t mean it has been in development for a while. Lots of people jump to that conclusion whenever a new game is announced. I bet 343 just started working on Halo 4 in the last year or so.

So will that make it quality or not? Are they going to be using the same shit as Reach or is it newer? If they really care and want to make tons more money in the long run, they will have updated the graphics and all that jazz for Halo 4. If they don’t and they just want quick cash, it’ll probably be the same engine as Reach and Halo 4 will be nothing special.

I wasn't surprised either. These game companies are just like any other companies in the world. Their goal is to make money. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just sad when they can't figure out how to reproduce their original success without killing a good series.